Nannies Get a Holiday. Rich Families Get a Suite.

NORIMITSU ONISHI

Monday

Sep 28, 2009 at 4:09 AM

A Ramadan exodus of domestic workers leaves Indonesia’s wealthy on their own; many check into hotels.

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Every year at the end of Ramadan, millions of maids, nannies and chauffeurs make their annual pilgrimages to their hometowns across Indonesia, leaving their pampered employers to fend for themselves.

Some of those left behind hire temporary maids at exorbitant rates. Others go abroad. Still others check into hotels not far from their homes.

In the basement of a luxury hotel, which had been transformed into a playground, Djoni Kamaruddin and his wife, Lianny, who opt for a Jakarta hotel every year, sat down for lunch with their son and daughter. “We just think of this as a holiday,” Mr. Kamaruddin, 37, said jovially.

But a minute later, Mr. Kamaruddin’s face tightened as his 8-year-old son threw a temper tantrum, the boy’s round, bespectacled face scrunched up in anger. Because it was a holiday, the boy said, he wanted to eat his lasagna and chicken fried rice with a spoon, which most Indonesians use, not a fork.

The father reasoned, cajoled, pleaded and, after the fork went flying across the hotel floor, shook his son. The parents quickly mentioned that their two maids, who had left Jakarta a week earlier, were returning the next day.

In one of the world’s largest annual exoduses, tens of millions of Indonesians leave Jakarta and other cities to celebrate Id al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday at the end of Ramadan, with relatives in villages and towns across rural Indonesia. More than 27 million are believed to have made the trip home this year, according to the authorities.

The exodus transforms Jakarta overnight. It thins the smog that envelops the skyscrapers in the city center. It stills its construction cranes. It empties its perennially clogged streets of ojeks, the kamikaze-like motorcycle taxis that weave in and out of traffic, and find shortcuts on sidewalks. Business comes to a halt.

It also wreaks havoc in wealthy and middle-class households that — given the seemingly endless supply of cheap labor in this country of 237 million, mostly poor people — depend on domestic servants. This year, hotel occupancy in the city rose 70 percent during the holidays, according to the Jakarta tourism agency. While 35 percent of the guests were visitors from outside the capital, the rest were Jakarta residents checking into hotels.

At the Hotel Mulia Senayan in south Jakarta, most weekday guests are foreign businessmen, according to Adeza Hamzah, a hotel spokesman.

But last Tuesday morning, instead of businessmen in suits or batik, the hotel lobby was swarming with young families. A man in shorts and Crocs kept an eye on his daughter, whose sneakers squeaked furiously on the lobby’s marble floor. Mothers pushed strollers, unaccompanied by nannies dressed in telltale monotone uniforms.

For many, compounding the holiday stress was the common fear that their maids — after getting their Id al-Fitr bonuses — would stay in their villages or look for better jobs elsewhere.

“It’s getting more difficult to find people who want to work as domestic helpers in Jakarta,” said Sugito, 54, who runs a domestic help agency and, like many Indonesians, uses one name. “They prefer to work as migrant workers because the money is better.”

Mr. Sugito also arranges temporary help for Jakarta residents, charging $55 for the service. The temporary maids, he said, earn $5 to $8 a day, the equivalent of what many earn in a week during normal times.

“Last year, I earned two months’ wages just by working 10 days,” said Zubaedah, 34, who came here from west Java with her 17-year-old daughter to look for temporary work.

“It’s hard not to celebrate with my kids and family, but we need the money for my children to go to school,” she said. Her husband, she added, makes about $1 a day selling ice cream.

A few in this Westernizing society see the maid shortage not as a problem but as an opportunity. Julie Tan, for one, said she tried to use the temporary absence of her two maids to instill some much-needed discipline in her three children.

“They’ll call the maid to get a glass of water,” said Ms. Tan, 42, who lived in Los Angeles for 10 years and was worried that her children might one day also have to face life in a place without someone at their beck and call. She ordered takeout at home. Her children helped with the laundry and dishes.

“It’s once a year,” she said. “So it’s O.K.”

At the Hotel Mulia, Abraham Tjahja, 69, and Diana Farolan, 60, sat at a table near the pool, surrounded by their children and grandchildren. A daughter, visiting from Bali with her husband, had chosen to stay at the hotel, partly because the holidays had decimated her parents’ domestic staff.

Six of the couple’s eight maids, as well as the family’s two drivers, had gone home to their villages. So for a week or more, the couple and the children still living at home had been getting by with the help of only two maids and one temporary worker they had hired.

“We clean up our own bedroom,” Mr. Tjahja said, adding that stress over managing the domestic staff had contributed to a stroke his wife had a few years ago.

Mrs. Farolan, a plate of chicken satay before her getting cold, said, “This is the most tiring time of the year.”

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